#[ i guess it's different for me as a non-english speaker ]

[despairforme]

The way you write nnoi makes him sound like he has an american southern accent lmao

❝ Yeah? 'Daz a first. ❞

[bomberqueen17]

tone indicators

I reblogged this post without adding any commentary bc queue and not a lot of computer time lately but like okay here's the thing about tone indicators:

they're yet another in-group set of coded speech. like an inside joke, or a meme, or a conlang. if you are in a group that uses them, they're great and perfectly comprehensible.

but if you don't happen to have come from inside a group that uses them, they are exactly as exclusionary as any other heavy jargon or inside joke or acronym. I mean have you ever listened to soldiers talk? The US Army communicates in heavily jargon-ified speech, liberally laden with acronyms, so much so that it's a self-referential joke to make up obscene or deliberately-obfuscated ones to slip into official reports since the sorts of people who'd kick up a fuss about obscene language won't understand them.

It is exactly the same thing. Except that's exclusionary on purpose, and tone indicators are exclusionary in effect but tout themselves as inclusionary.

So if I, an outsider to this, am reading along, and after a sentence, there's a / and then between one and three letters, that is not enough information for me to use to look it up.

This is absolutely inaccessible if you are not alreadhy in the group that uses it.

I wouldn't mind if the people who used them were just like 'oh ha sorry jargon, i'll try to explain if it's not clear, sorry i forget you guys don't know them' just like any other inside joke or meme or whatever.

But I was in a discussion with someone on a Discord and when I was puzzled about them including these weird slash-acronyms after their statements they were like oh how nice for you that you're not neurodivergent and don't need to use these.

Uh no. The opposite actually. I'm the kind of neurodivergent that needs context. I handle being excluded from conversations very poorly. And that's where I get pissed off, that people seem to be holding these up as the new be-all end-all of Finally Solving The Problem Of Ambiguous Tones In Social Interaction. The hell you are, kids. They're just another layer, and I'd say the worst one yet, out of many many many attempts to solve this exact problem. They are fundamentally inaccessible. Don't mistake the fact that you learned them (somewhere, in some context inaccessible to me) for them actually being universal.

Considered against the many different solutions that have been offered since text-only speech was invented, tone indicators stack up as among the very least-accessible of the lot, since they contain so little context in and of themselves-- if a key is not provided then they're totally inaccessible, and are exceptionally difficult for non-native English speakers, and in general require so much memorization or cross-referencing as to be prohibitively hostile to outsiders.

And that's fine, if what your'e doing is just meant for talking to your friends. But don't come into my conversations and berate me for not having memorized whatever incomprehensible set of acronyms you've newly-decided are the new universal truth. And what drives me the most insane is how many of these acronyms someone has now decided to assign a whole new meaning to are acronyms that are well-known and already existed and are in heavy use. So if you try to look them up guess what you get! is it gonna be the newly-created version or the one that's been in use for fifty to seventy-five years??

For one, P.O.S. has had a specific meaning in written and spoken English for a really damn long time and if you call me a piece of shit in the actual language I speak I am absolutely not going to interpret your conlang as having intended something nice. (YES REALLY THEY'RE USING THAT ONE TRY TO GUESS WHAT IT MEANS. NO. NO! I know. Fuck! That's wild. Absolutely the fuck not.)

[matan4il]

Hello. Can I ask why everybody is calling Israel a "colonial" state? Because it annoys me very much when I see that for three main reasons:

1. My country was a former member of the British colonial rule. Do you know what happens when a country gets colonised? Every bit of the wealth generated went to the Crown, every political decision had to be approved by the Crown, laborers were exploited as much as possible, my people were directly under the orders from a British Monarch who actively hated them. The economy was in shambles after we got independence. As far as I know, since the state of Israel was created, it does not answer to any foreign country (the UN is not a country). How is this a European 'colony'?

2. Most(All?) people who immigrated to Israel were refugees. If Jewish people living in Europe did not have any ties to the land of Israel and were completely 100% European, why were most of them killed horrifically during the Holocaust for not being the right race? Why does nobody talk about the expulsion of Jews from the surrounding Arab countries? Where should these people go?

3. People also seem to forget that governments can be stupid. Just because they are the ruling party does not mean they're capable of making sound decisions for their people. Even a non-colonial government makes bad decisions. If you can separate Trump from the rest of the US, why can't you do the same for Israel?

I do not want to reduce the suffering of the Palestinian civilians. However using the wrong terminology is not the way to help these people. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm really tired of this 'colonizer' takes.

(I hope I made my point clear as English is not my first language?)

Hi, lovely Nonnie!

Please, your English is great! I would have never guessed you're not a native speaker. :D

And you are absolutely right about every single point. Also, my heart goes out to you! I'm so sorry that your people have also suffered due to colonialism. I'm sending you BIG hugs!

Colonialism is what destroyed my people. After our homeland was repeatedly colonized, the Roman colonizers went even further than previous regimes, and expelled most of our ancestors from this land (a small Jewish minority wasn't, and that's why there has been a documented continuous Jewish presence in Israel for over 3,000 years). The expelled Jews became a spread out minority in other countries. With such small numbers in each country, it was easy to vilify us, we were vulnerable to every attack, with hardly anyone defending us, and no real option to defend ourselves. The Holocaust happening to us is directly linked to this way that we were forced to exist for almost 2,000 years in the diaspora.

Meanwhile, our land continued to be repeatedly colonized by different regimes. Each one did exactly as you said, exploited our country for their own benefit. The Ottomans, as just one example, cut off so many trees to build the Hejaz railway (which connected today's Syria to today's Saudi Arabia for the purpose of Muslim pilgrimage to the Saudi mosques), that the Land of Israel went through a desertification process. When Jews started returning in substantial numbers (because in small ones, there were always individual Jews who tried returning to our ancestral land), we did exactly what native populations try to do, restore the land, through continued research and development, to its pre-colonized state.

That's on top of the fact that, as you mentioned, we don't answer to or serve any European (or western) country. Colonies serve a metropole, but there is none for Israel. It's just our country. It's just the place where we live, even when it's incredibly difficult, because it's our ancestral homeland, which we've returned to, after our ancestors prayed for that for almost 2,000 years.

You're also spot on about the fact, that Jews were always discriminated against and persecuted in every country in the diaspora (with a few exceptions in South East Asia, the most important one being India). We were treated that way precisely because there was a historic recollection that we are foreigners. That we were south west Asians, living as a minority in countries that never truly wanted us, like Norway, or Spain, or Morocco. That's why it was so easy to kill us in the Holocaust. That's why it was so easy to expel us from Arab countries. Because we were never truly accepted by the locals.

But even after expulsions and surviving the Holocaust, there are so many places in the world Jews could have turned to! Places where there would be less resistance to us forming a country. Yet, the overwhelming majority of Jews rejected such suggestions. If they hadn't, then we would have truly been colonizers. But that's not what we yearned for. We always dreamed of returning to our homeland, so eventually it became evident to everyone that there's only one real option for a Jewish state, and that is in the Jewish ancestral land.

The reason why people claim that Jews are colonizers of their own land (some deny all historic ties Jews have to Israel, despite every piece of evidence to the contrary, while others acknowledge the Jewish history of Israel and the continued Jewish presence there, but claim that it's been so long ago, it doesn't count anymore. I've never seen any other native group being told that there's a time limit on their native rights. Have you?) is because it allows a narrative that once again vilifies Jews.

When the worst thing Jews could have been was of an evil religion, they described us as evil in religious terms (accusing us of having killed Jesus, and accusing us of using the blood of non-Jewish kids to bake a special kind of bread meant for religious purpose). When the worst thing Jews could have been was of an evil race, they described us as evil in racial terms (describing us as being sub-human, and accusing us of wanting to take over the world, to destroy it for the rest of the human race). Now that de-colonization is such a powerful (rightfully so) narrative, the worst thing Jews can be is evil colonizers... So guess what we're suddenly described as? Evil colonizers, who plot, steal, abuse and genocide another population (when in reality we consented to coexist with it 76 years ago).

I hope that sort of answers it? Basically, it's the newest form of the same age old antisemitism. Find the worst thing Jews can currently be, and depict them as that.

Thank you for seeing past the vilification! It means a lot. I'm sending you lots of love! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[casualavocados]

so i've been going down several translation holes while giffing kiseki... finding different sources which have their own translations, etc. then trying to choose the words that fit the meaning of the scene im giffing best.

i just wanna talk about two lines in particular that have made me tilt my head and wonder about nuances, so here we go:

the first line/translation i want to mention is from ep9, and is to do with the meaning and intention of the characters/story. it's when chen yi is confronting ai di after he gets out of prison about the time ai di slept with him four years before. i found three different versions of what ai di cuts him off with:

these all contain insanely different meanings in english. i was losing my mind trying to figure out the subtleties of what ai di was saying here, so i reached out to a very helpful speaker of the language who has made kiseki translation posts before, @nikkotinamide , and they said this about it:

and i just got so excited about that...the nuance! the specifics! referring to it as "settling accounts" is likely where the first translation about "the past" comes from, but the other two are closer to the true meaning. however, if you simply went with the revenge line you would miss the complexities that are being suggested in ai di's character.

thinking of that night as a debt he owes to chen yi and has to pay back... as something to be settled - something he isn't even really asking about but more expects chen yi to follow through on... it makes this line so much more poignant to me because it describes his guilt and heartbreak about what happened between them - about what ai di chose to do - in a much more specific and cutting way. ai di expects anger, rejection, and retaliation from chen yi, and tries goading him into reacting in those ways bc he believes he has done something unforgivable (and also that chen yi doesn't (and will never) love him), so he would rather chen yi push him away than risk being that close again.

(un?)luckily for him chen yi is absolutely smitten with him and doesn't let him get away with it. ♥️

the second translation i want to focus on is in ep12 & has more to do with words that don't translate exactly into english, but i went on a similar bender trying to decipher it:

specifically the translation of the last two characters: "堂口 (táng kǒu)" - the word translated here as "office".

bc outside of youtube i found those characters also translated as "headquarters," "gang," and "hall", which are all, again, wildly different from each other. so my best guess was that it was actually a very specific word that highly depended on the context it was being used in, and that context was being translated generally so that non-speakers in the audience would understand. but i wanted to know what that specific word and context was!

so i reached out to a bestie who did some more digging and she found this:

which IMMEDIATELY made me batshit insane because of course that's what it means; of course it's that specific!!

"office" is too professional for where chen yi lives - it's a car garage; it's their front as an auto shop. but it's also not yiyun's "headquarters" because that's the building with the spa where chen dongyang and his husband operate out of: the true central point of the gang. but because of this other line in episode 3, we know chen yi (and ai di too through association; they're a pair, do not buy separately, etc.) leads a specific division of yiyun gang:

so when chen yi asks ai di in ep12 if he's going to the bar or to "堂口" he's asking if he's coming home to the auto shop: their specific division of the gang, (which we knew all along was what he was talking about in the first place).

(...and this is just me continuing with the meta side of it, not the translations, but i also think this connects to what xiao jie and ai di were both talking about when they brought up chen yi's succession as the leader of yiyun:

because chen yi is currently just a leader of one branch of the gang, and young (25 at the point where cdy retires), so to me it makes sense that older, senior members of the gang - possibly even leaders of other divisions - would want that spot. but chen yi is practically cdy's son so get wrecked guys the gang passes to him. 🥰

and that's also why cdy is urging ai di to just come back and be a member again. bc he raised both chen yi and ai di (they are a pair, do not buy seperately) and because chen yi is gonna need ai di to watch his back as he takes over full responsibility. ...im mad we didn't get to see more inter-gang dynamics. that could have been so COOL let me IN.)

anyway those are the two translation bits that have left the biggest impression on me while i've watched and giffed kiseki so far. i just think language is so fucking neat.

[prontaentrega]

@fluctuating-fixations It's mostly about some specific word choices that don't really change the plot or the whole direction of the story so it's not like, an entirely different book, but they alter the whole tone of it and makes it worse to me. The first thing i noticed I didn't like about it was when Valentín first mentions Marta and he says "my girl" i immediately went he would not fucking say that!!!!!

In the original Spanish the word he uses for Marta is "compañera" which translates to partner or comrade (F). It's not the most common word to talk about your girlfriend in spanish so it's a deliberate choice on his part. What was the need to change it? to make it sound more natural? to make him sound less political?

In that same page he goes on to talk about his guerrilla comrades and he actually uses the word compañeros for them. The masculine/neutral form of the word he uses for Marta

But the one that really annoyed me is this one

Because in this part the word he uses in Spanish is, again, compañera. And idk about you but i think it has a completely different meaning if you say "if she's my woman, it's because she's in the struggle too" or if you say "if she's my comrade/partner, it's because she's in the struggle too." And besides he would never call anyone "his woman" it's just completely contrary to his whole character... this and a bunch of other small stuff like it mischaracterizes Valentín as more of a macho figure than he really is. And this is an issue i have with literally every adaptation and translation of this book tbh everyone's always so fixed on making this college educated communist latino more violent and sexist and angry. I wonder why

This one's minor but it also bothers me, when talking about the panther woman movie there's a character that in Spanish is "the architect colleague" but in English she's "the assistant" ????? what reason was for that other than misogyny

Maybe this is a non-issue and I'm nitpicking but with the book's narrative being exclusively a dialogue between two people, word choice is fundamental because this is the only way we have of knowing these characters. And especially on a book where gender expression and gender roles are such a main theme this is not like, getting mad because they switched coffe for tea on a sentence. Which I'm also mad about btw. They completely ditch any mention of the characters drinking mate and switch it for tea. Once again I'm asking what was the point? to make it all less exotic? to make it easier to understand to English speakers? having to look up what a mate is or just guess it from context isn't gonna kill anybody, but the translation is so afraid of alienating its gringo audience that it discards cultural context and reduces its only two characters to shallower versions of themselves. And I'd say the cultural context is pretty relevant because this is a book about two political prisoners under a dictatorship that was written and published when Puig's own country was under a neoliberal dictatorship. It's not Vonnegut's cat's cradle with a made up dictator in a made up country, this was actually the situation in Argentina in 1976.

And obviously someone who only speaks english won't notice any of this. What makes me sad about this is that none of the problems i have with it have to do with impossible cultural clashes, it would be extremely simple to fix all of that. It's a tragedy that the only english translation of a latin american book about gender and propaganda was made in 1976. But still I'd rather someone read the book even with the bad translation than not read it at all

[fairytale-poll]

ROUND 1B, MATCH 16 OUT OF 16!

*Though I am referring to her as Popelka, her original name in Czech, she is also often referred to as Aschenbrödel, her German name. Additionally, Three Wishes for Cinderella is the English title (with an alternate localized title being Three Gifts for Cinderella). The original Czech title, Tři oříšky pro Popelku, and the German title Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel both are translated as Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella. All names and titles have been tagged. Any local Czech or German speakers feel free to correct me for any mistakes! :)

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Danielle:

This is, imo, the single best retelling of Cinderella out there. She has a great character, her relationship with the prince grows organically rather than happening in a single night, and the scene with the bandits is top tier

The story is told as a historical romance instead of anything supernatural happening. Drew Barrymore is a cute Cinderella, Anjelica Houston is an incredible stepmother, and she's also really nasty to one of the stepsisters too, who ends up taking Danielle (Cinderella)'s side. Also Leonardo da Vinci is hanging around painting a portrait of Danielle at one point.

The Drew Barrymore Cinderella is fantastic. It’s got real history mixed with beautiful whimsy! I absolutely love the butterfly wings and how she spoke up for her step mother and sister at the end (and that they were still punished). I feel like I need to go watch it now.

she’s funny and smart and she’s resourceful (also her outfits are historically accurate!)

Popelka:

She has so much personality. She's funny, smart, kind, has a lot of spunk, and she really does things instead of just waiting for miracles to occur. Also, she's a great rider and has a deadly aim with bow and arrow.

She finds three hazelnuts that grant her wishes by giving the clothes to do what she wants. Beautiful dresses. The prince puts a ring on her finger while she’s in her huntsman’s outfit.

I don't know how it's faring in modern day Czechia, but here in Germany, Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel is still THE (non-Disney) Cinderella adaptation and a yearly rewatch for many, despite literally turning fifty this year. It's just so fairytale and also just... good? And she hangs out in the woods and shoots with a crossbow and saves deer and gives the prince riddles and then the music aaa the music!! I guess this isn't just a submission of this version of the character but this version of the story. For those who don't know: This adaptation is based on a Czech author's retelling of the Grimm version of the story, the film was a co-production of Czechoslovakia and East Germany and it slaps so hard it gets played at least 10 times (usually more) on public german television in and around December every single year. This is not an exaggeration, you can look it up, they even make a special, official info graphic with all the air dates every year that people can (and do!) share on social media. In Germany, the main event of Christmas is the 24th, Christmas eve, and on that day they play it at least 4 times (often more) at different times of the day on different public channels (ALL of which any German with a hooked up tv has access to) so anyone who wants to watch it gets a chance to. And Aschenbrödel herself in the movie STILL holds up as a (within reasonable expectations) feminist character, she's skilled, she's smart, she's witty, she and the prince actually talk and they like each other for their personalities, like... yes, there's a couple of flaws with the movie that time has pointed out, but mostly small, background things or things you simply cannot expect a movie from 1973 to get right. It's SO well made and just plain charming, it has truly stood the test of time and I would be devastated if it weren't included. It's also my mum's favourite movie (she's from East Germany and was born in 1969 so she's had regular access to it basically all her conscious life) so we would actually usually watch it multiple times each year and even record it (first on VHS, later again on DVD) so we could rewatch it any time and yet, I literally never got tired of it. It's just good & magical & I love it. Even my brother, who usually didn't care for fairytale movies at all and would much rather play video games in his room, would come down and sit with us to watch this one, THAT'S how good and magical this movie is.

And if all that hasn't convinced you yet but you speak German, here it is on YouTube, go watch it:

[Link]

(I won't provide a Czech link since I can't vouch for any of them as I don't speak czech)

Anyway, dear tournament runner: Have a pic of Aschenbrödel, in my favourite of her magically provided outfits, for the poll:

[Link]

She is the Cinderella of like eastern central Europe and the Story is a little different (she's no. 1 girlboss, beats the prince in a shooting contest and instead of a fairy she has 3 magic hazelnuts/ a magic owl)

[neptunerunaway]

Alastor's Accents & Linguistic Analysis

I love linguistics and I ended up getting really fixated on Alastor's accent so here's an analysis I cooked up

In the series, Alastor speaks with a Mid-Atlantic accent, also known as a transatlantic accent. It is a blend of English that seeks to blend American and British (specifically Received Pronunciation) accents. This accent was mainly used by two groups of people. 1) the wealthy, upper-class, who often learned to use it in private preparatory schools. And 2) entertainers.

(It was also commonly used to teach non-native English speakers)

This accent was very commonly used in the entertainment industry in films, theater productions, and radio broadcasts, which explains why Alastor would use it.

(It's not that important, but while listening to the character, I noticed that the pilot va and the series va have slight variations of the accent. Particularly, pilot Alastor avoids the rhotic r sound almost completely, while series Alastor only occasionally cuts the rhotic r, so you hear them a lot more.

If you want to hear it, listen to the words than end in -r. Can you actually hear the r sound or is it a vowel that implies an r?)

The thing about a Mid-Atlantic accent though, is that it is a learned accent that speakers need to be trained in. No one used it natively except maybe those raised in the wealthy elite.

(I have a slight fascination with accent training bc I'm from an area that has an accent that people train to use. Newscasters used to be sent here in order to learn the accent)

So Alastor would not have grown up using that accent, but rather had to learn it for his job as a radio host. He may have taken to using it in everyday life as an adult, but we can't be sure.

So what is his natural accent? We can't be 100% certain, but we can take a guess, so lets' look at the facts we have about his life.

We know he was born and raised in New Orleans and he's 'mixed race Creole' which narrows it down quite a bit. Now, New Orleans is actually quite linguistically diverse, but to untrained ears (myself) they sound very similar. Here's a video about a few of the accents:

So there it is, that is possibly the accent Alastor would naturally have. Of course, there are a few other factors to consider, such as the time period, but I'm not sifting through research papers to figure out if there were any distinct differences.

As I leave us here, let me say that I am in no means an expert in anything I talk about here, I am merely someone who really enjoys languages and linguistics and all notes here are from an amateurs observations.

[pearbunny]

the bucket list ✘ [five]

series masterlist | prev | next [ ❀ spotify playlist ]

summary: Fly to Korea. Check. Buy a bouquet of flowers for a stranger. Check. Have said stranger come along with you to accomplish your bucket list? Well that wasn’t on the list, but falling in love was. 

pairing: han jisung x afab!reader

genre: 18+ [MDNI] strangers to lovers, non idol au, crack, mostly fluff, later chapters to include: angst, comfort, smut.

general warnings:  tourist!mc, adult themes including but not limited to: suggestive content, nudity, cursing, alcohol consumption, mentions of death in later chapters, overarching theme of mental health, eventual smut.

word count: ~6.3k 

chapter content: mentions of food, alochol, excessive drinking, public singing, restaurant/bar setting, chef!lee know, bartender!jisung, barowner!changbin.

author's note: HAPPY BIRTHDAY STAY!! It's my first ever, hehe. Anyway, if I miss anything in the content warnings, please let me know. This one is longer than all other chapters, but i do hope you enjoy. :)

“Okay,” You grab your coffee and sit cross legged on the couch next to Jisung. 

He almost jumps out of his seat, caught by surprise. He glares at you playfully with a pout on his lips, making a dramatic show of it all. “Y/N! What if I died in my game?!” He was playing on his Nintendo switch, completely engrossed in whatever game it was. 

You peer over his shoulder, taking a glimpse at the screen. You roll your eyes at him and reach towards the leather bound notebook on the couch with your free hand. “Jisung, you’re playing Animal Crossing. You can’t die in that game.” 

Jisung presses a couple of buttons on the handheld console and the sound of little high pitched gibberish plays on its built-in speakers. “Okay, counterpoint: what if I could?”  He looks back at you, this time he’s the one to raise his brow. The pout on his lips quickly turns into a wide grin when you laugh at him. 

The two of you have gotten into a comfortable routine at his apartment. He’s always up by the time you wake up and has already made coffee for himself, so he’s already got a cup for you waiting. You would join him in the kitchen after showering, hair up in a towel, make-up free, completely fresh from the sleep of the previous night. 

One particular morning though, he wasn’t in the kitchen and instead in his room with the door cracked open. He had left you a note on the kitchen counter next to your coffee that had said, “Working on music. Headphones on. Just come in if you need anything.” It was in Korean and was a little difficult to read. Messy, all over the place, different sizes of characters, and you were about to give up until you saw an arrow at the corner of the post-it. You flipped it over and there, written just as messily, was an English translation. You remember being thankful over how thoughtful he was, despite the little drawing of a crying laughing smiley face next to it. 

“I have a couple of questions, Jisung.” You place the book on your lap and flip it open with your left hand whilst you sip your coffee in your right. 

“What’s up?” The clicky-clacky of the buttons of his switch sound off.. 

“Well,” you were looking over the list, “Do you have a pool?” 

“No.”  He answers simply.

“Okay, guess we’re not crossing off Have a Pool Party from the list…” Your brow furrows as you continue to find other options. “Would you want to go sky-diving?” You look over to him for his answer. 

This time, he drops his game to look you straight in the eyes. “No. No way. Me? In a plane where I jump off?” He shakes his head and picks the game back up. “Ha. You couldn’t pay me.” 

While he goes back to his game, you find yourself subconsciously smiling, sneaking in a couple more seconds of simply observing him: just in a white oversized tee, gray sweats, his hair kind of messy, most likely from laying in bed tossing and turning trying to get sleep. His glasses rest low on the bridge of his nose. When he rubs the strain from one of his eyes you quickly look away. 

You stare a hole into the page of the notebook. “Ummm,” You glance back over to him to see if he noticed you staring. He didn’t, thankfully. Or if he did, he didn’t say anything about it. 

“Oh,” He places the Switch on the coffee table, “Didn’t you want to do the road trip one?” 

You shrug your shoulders. “I did, but you don’t have to come with me on it. I can take a bus or something.” 

He shakes his head and grabs the book from your lap and puts it on his own. “Nah, no way. We’ll go together.” He runs his fingers over a couple of the items. “Look, you’ve got ‘Send a Message in a Bottle’, ‘Sleep under the Stars’, and ‘Exchange playlists with someone’. That is all road trip material. We can go to Busan.” 

You scoot closer to him, looking at the things he pointed out. “Yeah, but I would feel bad if you were to come with me.” 

Jisung rolls his eyes and closes the book with a slight thump. “You’re already staying in my apartment rent free.” He looks at you with a dead panned expression. He stands up and takes the book with him as he goes into the kitchen area. 

You follow him, bringing your cup of coffee with you to the kitchen island with you.”Okay, but what about work?” 

“We can stop by tonight.” He says, working on replacing the water in the sunflower bouquet vase. “You can see where I work and I can beg my boss for more days off.” 

“I finally get to see where the Han Jisung works?” You watch him with your eyes squinted and a playful smirk on your lips. “Maybe he works as an adult dancer, or at a host club?” 

You can see his shoulders shake up and down as he laughs. “Definitely not.” He turns back around to you, placing the vase on the island. “So, what do we need to get ready for our trip?” 

You set your coffee cup aside and grab your phone, quickly searching up a travel guide to Busan on the browser. “Okay, well the bullet train will be about 60,000 Korean Won per person…” You scroll through the page, eyes speed reading through it. “First train leaves at 5:30 am and it would take us 3 hours…” You frown, that seemed like a lot of money…

Jisung leans against the island, hands bracing himself on either edge of the counter. “Or we could make it a real road trip and drive.”

“Oh,” You look up at him momentarily, then go back to your phone, opening a new tab. “Would renting a car be that much cheaper?” 

Jisung laughs and places his hand over your phone, making you put it down. “I have a car, you dork.” 

“You have a car?!”

Jisung nods simply, “Yes.” 

“And we’ve been walking and taking a taxi everywhere?” 

“Have you ever driven in a city? It’s horrible,” he pauses to laugh. “But if we’re going out of Seoul, it’s probably way more convenient than the train… but it will take us maybe an extra two hours.” 

“Hmmm,” You rest your hand on your palm, thinking about the price of everything. “I guess in the long run, it would be cheaper if we decide to go to different places in Busan.” 

Jisung goes to his room quickly and brings back his laptop, placing it on the counter and taking the seat beside you. He wakes the laptop off of sleep mode, “Do you normally plan out things? Next you’re going to give me an hourly schedule.” 

You nod and give off a lopsided smile. “Yeah.. that is something I would do. That’s part of the reason why I wanted to do the bucket list.” 

“I can kind of understand that.” Jisung takes a glance at you, before opening his own browser and looking up boarding options. “Well I’m glad you’re stepping out of your comfort zone.” He stares at his screen now, biting his lip in concentration as he scrolls through pages. 

“Thanks.” You place your hand on the back of his chair to brace yourself on it as you lean over to peer at his screen. “What about this one?” 

He checks the availability. “One room left with two beds. I’ll book it right now.” 

You hop off your chair and before you could make it through the guest room door, Jisung closes his laptop. “Okay, check-in is at 3.” 

You turn around and pout at him, “But I was supposed to pay for it. I’m the one doing the bucket list!” 

Jisung shrugs and takes his laptop, “Then you get the next one.” You can’t see it, but you know that he had the biggest grin on his face. “I’m going to pack my bags. I say we leave tomorrow at 10am.” 

It doesn’t take you long to pack for a trip to Busan. You’re not completely sure how long you were staying, but you do pride yourself on being a habitual over-packer so you aren’t too worried. The only things you consciously have to look out for are your bath supplies. 

You changed into a pair of black wide-legged trousers and a cream square necked tank top, opting to go for a more casual look. Ontop, you had on a black lightweight cropped blazer, giving you the illusion of longer legs. 

When Jisung meets you back in the living room, he’s in a black band tee, jean jacket on top with some loose legged pants. He carries a duffel bag worth of clothes and places it by the door for easy access tomorrow morning. 

Your full suitcase is next to it and he turns his head to look back at you on the couch. “Really? We’re only going for a couple of days.”

“Yeah, but you can never be too prepared.”  You smile brightly at him. 

“Did you leave anything behind?” He makes a show of lifting up your suitcase. 

“Well, I’m not that insane. I left the clothes I’ve already used behind.” 

Jisung checks the clock on the wall and grabs his keys from the counter, “Ready to go? It’s kind of late, sorry. We can grab some food at my workplace. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.” 

“I’ve always wondered what kind of food they had at a host bar.” 

By the time you two get to the bar, it’s already 8:00. Jisung reaches for the door’s handle and pulls it open for you, “Come on in.” 

You step inside, closely followed by Jisung. The place is dark and dimly lit: overhead fluorescent lights low to allow the neon signs along the walls to cast more of a moody atmosphere. In the far back corner is a bar, and on the short wall farthest from the bar is a built-in bookcase with a neon sign in the middle that reads, “Music For The People”. Beneath the sign is an assortment of cards and board games. The place seemed to have a very laid back feel, long tables to promote mingling with different groups of people. 

There’s a DJ set up in another corner with a stage set up next to it, two microphone stands and a monitor below the stage. Judging by the two people on the stage singing, it seemed to be karaoke night. 

“It’s on your bucket list, right?” 

You look at Jisung with a soft smile on your face. You’re touched that he remembers. 

Looking around, you notice that there are people of all sorts; people that seem to be local, and foreigners as well. You definitely don’t feel like you stick out like a sore thumb for whatever reason. Then again, you remember that you are in the more touristy part of the city, so it made sense that the place looked foreigner-friendly. 

“This is where I work. Not really a host bar, is it?” He offers you his hand as he nods his head back towards the corner where the bar was at. It was crowded in that area, lots of people waiting for their drinks or wanting to order one. 

You take his hand without a moment of hesitation. As he makes his way through all the people, you stick close behind him. Eventually, he’s at the bar and he maneuvers you in front of him just when a seat opens up. You gratefully take the seat and lean towards him, making it easier for him to hear you over the people singing on stage and the people talking around you. “No, it’s definitely not. But I wasn’t too far off.”

Jisung opts to stand next to you instead of taking a seat, leaning himself on the counter. He waves over at a worker behind the bar, a wide grin on his face. “Changbin!” 

Your eyes look toward the man Jisung was waving at. After the man finishes up with another customer at the other end of the bar, he comes towards the both of you. He works out, you can tell with how his plain black tee hugged his pecs and his biceps. In contrast to how built he looks, he has fluffy locks of black hair and the kindest smile. “Yo! Hannie!” 

You wince at the pure volume that came out from the man. A couple of the patrons look in his direction, surprised as well, and other people who you assume are regulars, merely laugh. 

“Ah, you must be Hannie’s new friend!” Changbin looks at you with his brows raised, then quickly glances over at Jisung before going back to you. “Hannie said that he had a friend come into town and he was going to show them around.” 

You nod and smile nervously at the man, “That would be me. I’m Y/N. Did he tell you that we had just met that day, too?”

Changbin looks back at Jisung pointedly. “He did not. But you can fill me in while Hannie here helps out for a little bit, yea? I’m guessing one of those tour guides suggested us to a group of foreign college students and Lee Know-Hyung is in the back on dedicated chef duty.” 

“Ah, okay got it.” Jisung doesn’t whine or complain about it and instead, squeezes past all the throngs of people. You can vaguely hear him screaming, “If you let me through, you’ll get your drinks faster” over all the noise. It makes you giggle. 

Changbin looks at you with a raised brow and a smirk. “So, what will you have?”

“Uh,” You try to think of any of the mixed drinks you’ve had in the past. “I’m not really good at ordering drinks?” 

He laughs and you laugh along with him. “How can you be bad at ordering a drink?”

You place your hands on the edge of the bar counter and lean forward, raising the volume of your voice to combat the change in song and the seemingly drunk singers over the speakers. “My friends usually order me drinks.” 

Changbin nods as if he understands. He looks over to his left on his side of the bar and calls out in a loud voice to Jisung who is pouring shots of sort of liquor into six shot glasses lined up in a row. “Hannie! For Y/N?” 

Jisung looks over quickly before placing the bottle down and taking the glasses three by three and placing them towards the people ordering them. He takes their card and quickly turns around to swipe it before handing it back. He looks back over to you and Changbin and yells back over. “French ‘75 to start!”

“Ohhh, interesting.” Changbin nods slowly and goes to make you the drink, placing champagne and other sorts of things into a shaker. 

“What’s that?”  You question, curious as you’ve never had it before. 

“It’s Champagne, gin, lemon, and sugar.” He moves the shaker back and forth which shows off his biceps. You almost laugh at how muscular he truly is. He pours the drink into an angular sleek champagne flute and places it in front of you. 

You move your purse in your lap so you can take your wallet out, but Changbin shakes his head. “Nope. It’s on Hannie.” 

You laugh and take your hands out of your purse and take a sip of the drink.Your eyes go wide at how much you like it. You can definitely taste the alcohol, but it's more bubbly than anything else. “Oh! This is good! It’s really refreshing too.” 

Changbin watches you while he rinses out the shaker. “M’hm. Hannie must know you well enough for that.” 

“Huh?” You glance back over and Jisung is talking to a couple of customers, laughing and smiling while taking orders. “Oh, did he base it on my personality?”

Changbin shrugs and works on another drink for a patron nearby. He talks to you while he prepares it, “It means you’re a little type A. But since he said to start with it–” 

“It means you gotta loosen up.” Jisung chimes in, coming by to check up on you. “But we’re just starting.” He flashes you a smile and grabs another bottle of liquor behind the bar and goes back to his section. 

You blush a little and make an effort to relax your shoulders. “Is it that obvious?” 

Changbin finishes up with his customer and comes back to you. “A little bit.” He gestures over to the stage, “Are you gonna’ sing?” 

“Oh, no. Definitely not.” 

“It’s on your list!” Jisung yells over. You’re unsure of how he hears you over the noise. He’s actually been looking back every so often to check up on you, but he goes back to his job whenever you look over, just missing his eyes on you by half seconds. 

You close your eyes and heave a loud sigh. “He’s right. It is on the list.” 

Changbin looks confused, but quickly shakes it off. “Okay, Y/N, you have to explain everything. But I’ll get you something to eat.” 

Changbin disappears behind a door that you assume is the kitchen. In that moment, Jisung manages to catch a breath to come back to you. 

“You doing okay?” 

You laugh and notice the sweat on his brow. “I think I should be asking you that.” 

He takes a couple of napkins and pats the sweat off of his forehead. “Yeah. I’m fine. But I gotta muster up the courage to ask Changbin for more days off after this so if you could really sell our situation, that would be great.” He flashes you a smile and eyes your drink. “Let me know when you’re ready for another.” 

You take the drink and take another big sip. You hiccup at all the bubbles. 

Jisung watches you and takes the glass from you once you're done. “So, what do you think? You gonna sing?”  He’s looking at you with something you can’t quite put the finger out. Like he was curious, or maybe like he was really just trying to give you all his attention. It made you feel kinda… fuzzy. 

“I don’t know, I’ve never sung in front of so many people.” Your eyes shift back and forth, feeling more anxious now that you noticed the way he held eye contact with you. “Maybe I just need more alcohol in my system.” 

He ducks down to your level which has slumped a bit because of your lack of confidence. He looks at you through the tops of his lashes. “Hey, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. You can just hang out, eat some good food, drink as much or as little as you want. You can watch me grovel on my feet for the next week off.” 

Jisung’s last comment makes you crack a smile and that makes him smile widely. Changbin comes back to the bar and stands by Jisung, raising a brow at the part he came in on. “Eh? A week?”

“No no, I’ll do it. I came all the way to Korea to do as much as I could on this list, so I will get on that stage and sing… but maybe after a couple of shots.” 

“Shots! Hey!!” Jisung is quick to celebrate and run to the other end of the bar to get shot glasses, completely avoiding Changbin’s question. 

Changbin points a finger at Jisung’s retreating form. “Did he say the next week?” 

You give an exaggerated shrug of your shoulders and a confused look. “No idea.” 

Jisung comes back with four shot glasses and pours some kind of clear liquid in it. Changbin whines – more like shouts in a whiny tone– and clicks his tongue. “Get Hyung in here if we’re doing a shot!” 

Jisung screams from his spot. “Hyung!” 

Almost immediately, another man comes through the kitchen door with four dishes in his arm, all balancing precariously in his hands and forearms. He places it on the counter against the wall and turns to the rest of you with a look of annoyance on his face that looks like it had been perfectly sculpted and molded from marble. “Oh. Good to see you’re actually in for a shift this week, Jisung.” He peers over at the shots and rolls his eyes. Then, he looks at you straight in the eyes and it makes you cower a little, the weight of his stare intimidating you. After a second, his features soften and he grins at you, his eyes turning into half moons and creasing at the edges. “Hi! I’m Lee Know!” He reaches over and takes his shot glass, bringing it up to his nose to smell it. “Vodka?” 

The rest of you follow Lee Know’s lead and put your glasses in the air then clink them together. 

“Geonbae!” 

You shut your eyes and take the shot, feeling the alcohol sting as it goes down. You shake your head in disgust and shove the glass back towards their side of the bar. 

Changbin laughs and this time it’s a high pitched one with a rapid staccato as he gathers the glasses and washes them off. 

Lee Know is still staring at you and that’s when you realize that you hadn’t introduced yourself. 

“Ah, oh. I’m Y/N. I’m Jisung’s new friend.” 

He nods once and goes back to the dishes he had placed down and hands them to Jisung to give them out. 

You look to Jisung quickly who gives you a shrug before going off to give people their orders which leaves you alone with the new man. 

“Seungmin says you’ve been staying with Jisung.” Lee Know crosses his arms over each other, leaning against the back counter.

Changbin listens in as he makes more drinks for his customers and he makes a point to make it known when he extends his neck over in your direction. 

“Yeah. For a couple of days. I told him it was okay and that I could find another place.”   Changbin slides you a drink in the meantime, which you gladly take. “Another French 75” he says. He gives you a look, what that reads: you might need this.

Lee Know is very hard to read and judging by how Changbin and Jisung both left you with him, you could only assume he was very respected, and maybe even feared. You sip on your drink, hoping that the buzz starts to come soon and that you gain some sort of confidence. 

“No,” Lee Know finally speaks, which causes you to look at him again. “Staying with Jisung is good. He needs a friend.” 

You tilt your head, confused at the statement. “Aren’t you all friends?” 

Lee Know nods and takes the empty glass. That sip that you took might have been more like a gulp. “Well, we are. But sometimes it’s easier to talk to other people about certain things.”  

Lee Know notices Jisung is back and places a hand on his shoulder before walking away. “Just get me for the next shot, yea?” 

Jisung gives him a thumbs up and places a plate in front of you. “I didn’t realize this was yours, sorry.” 

You look down at it and it’s beautiful. It was only a piece of salmon laid on microgreens, but the plating was exquisite. You look around the place again, just to make sure you weren’t in a 5 star restaurant. Jisung notices this and laughs. “That’s just Lee Know Hyung. We keep telling him to find another classier restaurant, but he says it would be too stuffy.” 

Changbin is at the register, swiping different cards. “Really, he’d just miss us too much.” 

Jisung nods in agreement. “Want another before you go up there?” 

You take a deep breath to calm your nerves. You chew on the inside of your cheek, debating on going up there and when that little ball of anxiousness knots in your stomach, you give him a nod. “One more. But give me something different.” 

Jisung nods and quickly grabs a shaker, pouring the ingredients in. “You ever had a Sakura Martini?” 

You shake your head, “No… I usually stick to vodka sodas. Do you think I’ll like it?” 

He shrugs, shaking the shaker in his right hand back and forth. “You’ll like the way I make it.” He gives you that grin again, the left corner of his lips pulling back to show his pearly whites. He’s being a little cocky, but it’s attractive? You think you may be a little tipsy at this point. He pours you the drink in a martini glass and garnishes it with a sprig of a flower; a sakura blossom judging by the name of the drink. 

You take the cocktail and sip on it, wincing a little. “Jisung, this is strong. Good, but strong.” 

He wipes the bar clean from the syrup that he spilled a bit of. “Well then, I guess you’ll be fine going up there.” He hands a book of songs to choose from and you’re flipping through the pages. 

While you parse through the songs, you are taking bites of the salmon and washing it down with your drink. At some point, Changbin had called a switch and when you look up, it’s him you see, which catches you off guard. 

“Where did Jisung go?” 

“Ah, his regulars came in.” 

You look in his direction and he’s surrounded by girls who are leaning forward on the bar to get his attention. 

Maybe it’s the alcohol, but you huff in slight annoyance. “Guess he’s popular.” 

 “He’s definitely good for business.”Changbin laughs. “So what was this I heard about you staying with him?” 

“I basically walked up to him, gave him some flowers, we grabbed coffee and he offered his guest room to me since I didn’t really have a place yet.” 

“You came to Korea wi–” 

“Yeah, I know. Kind of reckless of me. But that was the point.” 

“Oh, is this your list you were talking about?” 

You nod and place the booklet down, deciding on a song. “Yeah… I’ve kind of just been stuck in the everyday notions and I kind of decided to take the bucket list and just run with it.” 

Changbin’s expression grows soft and fond at your explanation. “What have you guys done so far?” 

“Well, I got a tattoo, we drew portraits of each other, we crashed a wedding. Tomorrow morning we’re planning on going on a small trip to Busan, but we can come back before his next shift,” You sputter out the last part quickly. “But tonight…,” You point your thumb at the stage, “I guess I’m doing karaoke?”

“Here in Korea, it’s Norebang.” Changbin takes a couple of empty glasses that were left on the bar and puts them in a crate that he’ll bring to the back to get washed. “Have you heard of a One Shot?” 

Lee Know comes back out with more plates to be served and his expression drops. “One Shot?!” His eyes roll to the back of his head and he grabs Jisung and brings him over. 

You’re confused. “What’s a One Shot?” 

Jisung is trying to catch up with the multiple conversations around him and since Lee Know had pried him away from his regulars, they followed him over to where you were seated, chanting ‘One Shot’ over and over again. “You just chug your drink.” 

“But I don’t have a drink?” 

“Then get everyone a drink, Changbin!” Lee Know yells as he excuses himself to serve his orders. 

“Mekju?” Jisung calls out and the group of girls agree. 

Changbin doesn’t have to look at you to realize you may not understand. “It’s Beer and Soju in a glass.” As he explains, he’s pouring four glasses while Jisung is working on another four. 

They both line up the glasses filled with light amber beer and soju. Lee Know comes back and takes his glass, raising it up in the air. “Love Shot!” 

Changbin grabs his glass and turns to Lee Know  He uses his eyes to tell you to grab your glass. You do, and once you have it in your hands, Changbin points at Jisung. You look at him a little confused, but Jisung grabs his own glass and extends his arm out in your direction.  At this, the girls pout and heave out sighs and whines of disappointment. They turn to their own friends and two by two, link their arms together and drink from their cups. 

You look to Changbin and Lee Know who are doing the same, albeit Lee Know dramatically hitting Changbin’s bicep. “You’re working out too much!” 

Jisung is looking at you with a smile on his face, eyes glistening in mischievousness, “Well?” 

You're feeling warm, your cheeks and ears are heating up. The lights in the restaurant are not helping you cool down. That’s definitely why you’re blushing, not because Han Jisung is looking at you like you’re the only one he sees at the moment. Well, that’s what he’s doing right? Or maybe it was the alcohol that made it seem that way…

You swallow the lump in your throat and wrap your arm around his. The bar counter between you too is a little too deep so you have to stand up and lean forward on your stool to get closer to Jisung. “Cheers.”  Your eyes are focused on Han Jisung’s and his are focused on you as you both start to chug your drinks. 

You pull apart and place your glass on the counter. You take a dramatic step back, fanning yourself. “It’s so hot in here.” 

Jisung eyes you for a moment with the same grin on his face before he takes your glasses away. “So, you gonna sing?” 

“I’m gonna sing!” 

You pull the collar of your jacket away from your neck, trying to cool yourself down. 

Lee Know holds his hand out. “Give.” 

You don’t question how demanding he seems to naturally be and shrug off your jacket to give it to him. You turn towards the stage, shaking your hands at the wrists to get rid of any nervousness left in your body. 

You place the correct number into the machine next to the stage and when the song that the current person is singing ends, you give an applause with the rest of the restaurant bar and take the microphone from them. 

You take a step on the stage and squint at how bright the lights are. You bring the microphone to your mouth and clear your throat as the synth of the intro starts to play. Your eyes dart back and forth at all the faces and you feel like you wanna back out all of a sudden, palms sweaty, knees feeling weak. 

At that moment, there are screams of encouragement from the bar. It’s Jisung, Changbin, and Lee Know. They’re whooping and hollering and clapping. One of the girls leans to Jisung to ask him a question and you can see him mouth your name. That same girl starts chanting your name and her friends join along. You can’t help but smile and even laugh. 

The screen in front of you starts to count down your queue. The intro isn’t that difficult to sing, it’s actually very similar to talking. When you got to the pre-chorus, it became a little more melodic. There’s a little riff that you attempt to do, you’re unsure if you nail it, but Jisung is cheering loudly for you and you close your eyes from embarrassment, choosing to look away from that corner of the room. 

When the chorus comes, most of the people in the place are singing along with you and over every single voice, you can hear Jisung, Changbin, and Lee Know’s. It was a back and forth between you singing, “Thank U, Next” and everyone else acting as your backup singers singing, “NEXT”. 

Some time during the second chorus, Jisung leans over to Changbin. “Hyung, I might need a week off.” 

Changbin pauses singing to raise a skeptical brow at the younger man, but quickly joins back in during the bridge.  “This is my favorite part!”

 By the end, everyone was singing the outro. 

Loud shouting and applause followed after the song and you quickly escaped back to your seat at the bar, squeezing past all the people who gave you pats on the back and thumbs ups. One of the girls who had taken your seat hopped off to give you the chair. 

You sat down and had your elbows on the table, face in your hands. You’re groaning in embarrassment, but mostly because you needed to contain all the adrenalin you felt in your body. 

“You did well, Y/N!” Lee Know pours your group another four shots. 

Jisung and Changbin look at their chef, confused. “When did you pour the shots?” 

Lee Know smirks and you can’t help but liken him to a cat at that moment. “Just take the damn shots.” 

By the time Changbin hands you your second glass of water, you were definitely drunk. You weren’t slurring your words, but you’d stop mid sentence to laugh at something you had just said yourself and Jisung was keeping up with you in terms of level of toxicity. 

Jisung was in the middle of taking another order when Changbin swats him away. “You’re off.” 

He fishes his phone from his back pocket. “Hyung, it’s only 2 in the morning.” He sighs dramatically, his intoxication pretty evident. 

Changbin grabs the bottle of liquor from Jisung’s hands and blocks him from it with his body. “Yea, well Y/N is drunk.” 

You look at him with a pout “Not that drunk.”

Chanbgin raises a brow at you when you start swaying a little in your seat and shakes his head. “Hannie, you are also drunk. You’re pouring a little too heavy handed.”  

Jisung nods admittedly. “Yeah, that’s true.” 

You giggle at that. 

Lee Know comes out of the kitchen, untying the apron around his waist and tossing it aside. “You guys have a road trip tomorrow though, no?” Lee Know takes an order next to you and then rolls his sleeve up to help Changbin out with the drinks. 

“Oh!” You nod your head, “We do! We should get going.” 

“Jisung, her coat.” 

“Ah” He bends down to the small locker for employees under the bar counter and grabs it and brings it over to you. He places it over your shoulders and holds his hand out. “I guess we’re on our way then?” 

“Byeeee '' You emphasize your goodbye, taking Jisung’s hand while waving at the two boys still working with your other. 

“Han Jisung!”  Changbin calls out once you’ve made it half way through the exit. 

“Yo?” Han yells back. His voice carries far and loudly it makes you wince in pain hearing it right next to you. 

“I’ll see you next week!” 

You turn around to see Changbin waving goodbye. Lee Know is pointing at the both of you and he screams, just as loud. “Get a hangover drink for the both of you!” 

You’re back at Jisung’s apartment after stopping by the convenient store for two hangover drinks, one for each of you in the morning.

You sit on the floor at the coffee table across from him, laughing at something he just said with another drink that Jisung had made for you when you mentioned you could do one more before calling it quits. “You can cross Sing Karaoke In Front of People off your list now.” He says, looking at you over the rim of his glass of whiskey.  “Oh, I can.” You place your now empty cup on the coffee table, getting on your feet to look for the notebook. You feel a little woozy, but it’s not concerning. As far as you’re aware, your speech wasn’t affected yet and you knew that was the tell tale sign that you had met your own personal limit. 

“It’s on the counter.” Jisung stands up with you and grabs your cup, heading over to the kitchen. 

You follow him and open the notebook, grabbing a random pen and crossing it off. “You know, I’m really glad I found this lis–” 

Your eyes look up and you find Jisung staring at you. 

He’s leaning with his back against the refrigerator, arms crossed and head slanted in your direction. One arm is crossed over his chest, the other is bent up at the elbow, his fingers resting on his bottom lip.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Your cheeks are already red so it hides the sweeping blush on your cheeks. The alcohol in your system makes you naturally giggly and happy, so the smile on your lips is excused, though you know that if you were sober, you’d look very similar to how you do right now. 

“Like what?” Jisung asks with a smirk on his lips. He pushes himself off the fridge and he takes a couple steps towards you to stand next to you. Soon, he’s in front of you, resting his arms on the island table behind you. You’re between his arms, trapped and you can’t look away from his gaze. He can’t hide his expression. His eyes are going over your whole form slowly, they come back up and linger on your lips for a moment, then he meets your eyes again and his deepens the smirk. 

“Like you want to kiss me?”

ending author's notes: I'm sitting here kicking my feet up and giggling "Like you wanna kiss me?" HEHEHE who do I think I am?! I hope you all enjoyed it. Next chapter contains smut.

taglist

@burningchaosdeer, @bat-shark-repellant, @jisunglyricist, @captivq, @lixiel0ver, @channieandhisgoonsquad, @dalamjisung, @laylasbunbunny, @beanebabyy, @leyknxw, @vixensss, @hyunfilms, @cutiespaghetti, @hanjisunginc

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[alchemicaladarna]

Well...Happy 1 year of QSMP I guess...

There's just no easy way to say anything about everything that's been happening the past few weeks and everything that's happened since yesterday because it's a fucking dumpster fire and I'm just so tired of it all to be honest...

But this post isn't about that.

I still want to celebrate this server's first year anniversary because of how much it means to me personally. I made a post talking about how I initially started watching the qsmp (two days early 💀) but I'll reiterate what I've always said:

That despite all the problems of the server, despite all the damage that has been done, never forget what it has managed to achieve and hopefully continues to achieve in the future, under better conditions.

The QSMP's mission was to unite people from all over the world to play together and be friends despite speaking different languages and having different cultures. It united communities and formed friendships across the globe. Personally, achieving that takes more than just sticking random people in the same room together because it's about making genuine connections that could last a lifetime. And the qsmp achieved that. I'll never stop saying this because despite all its glaring problems, the qsmp is revolutionary for all the good it has managed to do.

Ok, like think about the translations alone. I'm using Bad as an example because he's the only one so far that I've seen do this but, BBH has set up live translations of multiple languages on his screen so non-english speakers can still understand his streams and his vods even if he's not playing on the qsmp. That wouldn't have happened without the QSMP's influence. That's fucking incredible!

Think about all the CC's and admins that became friends after meeting on the server. Former admins like Lumi (Pomme) and Shade (Dapper) still talking to Bad on his chat and watching his stream. That's still really awesome! Not to mention all the amazing collaboration projects with many qsmp members outside minecraft like Ordem Paranormal and Liar Liar, to name a few.

Look, the last three weeks have been extremely difficult on everyone. I myself am tired of the situation and scrolling through the tag, especially after yesterday, just makes me sad tbh. For the first time since these weeks, I felt so despondent and shocked about everything. It got to the point where, after Shade and Lumi announced their departure, I called my mom and broke down sobbing and vented about the whole admin situation. And bless her heart, my mom actually listened and I'm going to share the advice she gave me:

"Let them fix the problem. Let the company do the restructuring they need to do because right now, it sounds like they have a lot of problems to fix. It's going to take a long time before things can go back to any sense of normalcy, so while they do that, focus on yourself for now. If you're so invested in all the problems of this online world, maybe it's time to step back for now. Maybe it's time to focus on the real world."

And well, she's right. I've been so upset about the situation that my mental health wasn't faring well because of it. Yesterday was kind of a wake up call for me I guess?

I've been in this fandom for 10 months now. It's the longest time I've been invested in a community and qsmp has and will always have a special place in my heart. But I think it's time to let go and move on for now. I'll keep my hopes up and hope that the future is bright, and the qsmp will continue because it has so much potential to achieve more greatness, but I'll leave the project to rest and focus on other endeavors for now.

I'll be posting art and checking in on stuff from time to time, and of course, I'll be watching BBH, but it might be time to depart and say, "Thanks for everything, and I'll see you later."

Most people will be ashamed to mention the fandoms they've been a part of when they were younger, but 10 years from now, if anyone ever asks if I was a part of the qsmp fandom, I'll gladly say yes and tell all the good stories I have about it.

I love the community we made here on qsmpblr, and if I trust the QSMP's mission of uniting people, then I trust that, no matter what happens, this community will be here when I return.

Because...Despite everything, it's all about love, right? And no matter what happens, the love is still there, and will always be.

Thank you for the journey <33

[ly0nstea]

I feel horrible speaking Irish. My family immigrated to America during the famine and quickly stopped speaking it by two generations here (my dad is third generation and I’m fourth generation) due to social stigma. My dad doesn’t speak it at all and I’m struggling to learn it, but I feel ashamed at how foreign it sounds in my accent and how bad my grammar is, it makes me want to give up, do you have any encouragement?

I don't know if it will make you feel better, but, everyone who learned Irish in school, from people who learned Irish in school (as opposed to a Gaelteacht where irish is spoken natively) has an 'unnatural' accent.

If you want tips, place your stress around fadas and destress non-fada'd syllables, start putting séimhiús in anywhere, séimhiús do have grammatical places they have to/not to appear, but as long as your not mixing up possessives, if saying tháim sounds more natural to you, say tháim.

If you want to do accent training, work on the individual sounds, (e.g. while 'é' sounds like 'ay' in English, its a little different to 'ay' and those little differences add up). Pick a dialect, find audio recordings, and practice.

Grammar honestly comes with time, read and write and you'll pick it up.

I guess lastly, I highly doubt you've ever been put off by someone speaking english with a German accent, or Chinese accent, or by the fact that they used the wrong tense or conjugation. I garuntee you any Irish speaker you meet is going to be way more excited than nitpicky that you can even say a few words.

(My secret grammar tip for people who read all the way down here though: verbal nouns. Once you start using verbal nouns casually you'll feel so cool)

Hope this helped you! Don't worry too much, speaking a new language is meant to be fun after all

[drelldreams]

I wondered why Javik has an African accent in the game (at least in the English version). Some type of Jamaican or Nigerian if I had to guess. (Correct me if I’m wrong). No other aliens have accents that don’t sound like some sort of American/Canadian.

I suppose that Javik would have whatever accent Shepard’s got in their translator setting, were his speech to be translated. So if Shepard is Canadian and has their translator set for alien speech to be translated into Canadian English, Javik would sound Canadian. But the Prothean language isn’t a language that the universal translator can translate. Javik speaks Shepard’s language. He ‘absorbed’ the language, so he is as fluent as a native speaker.

Only Protheans have different physiology to humans. Those differences in physiology may give Javik a ‘non-standard’ accent that happens to sound like a type of human accent.

[systematicallycapricious]

Time for English P4AU manga volume 2! Like last time, shenanigans are below the cut and requests for page comparisons are always welcome.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Overall Opinion

My initial read-through this time was done while I was sleep deprived, so take my impressions with a grain of salt, lmao.

I think the the three most memorable impressions I took away from the translation this time around were:

The syntax felt more markedly stilted to me than last time. As well, the writing was a bit awkward in some places, though I'm unsure if that's a trait of the original Jap writing or if it only arises from attempting to format it into Eng grammar and culture.

The fan-Eng translation took creative liberties with some words that I think were better served by the official-Eng's translation staying truer to the Jap text. Also, the official-Eng transl provided interesting insight into some things that the fan-Eng transl didn't, which I'll go into a bit below.

The scene where Minazuki ambushes Naoto was mistranslated as Sho being the speaker, despite the Japanese text clearly being Minazuki's language patterns. TuT

Overall, I had a positive impression of it and would say that it's worth reading for those who don't mind a few errors and awkward lingual choices.

As for the ミナヅキ・皆月 naming differentiation... Thus far, both Sho and Minazuki have been "Minazuki", as per adherence to the Jap naming scheme. No alternative font, font effects, subtext, special text bubbles, nor anything to clarify the distinction. However, I'm personally reserving judgment until I get my hands on Vol 3, as I have a sliver of hope that the protagonists knowing the difference is permission for the audience to know the difference. I'm not sure how much I actually believe in said sliver, but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt at the very least. ^^;

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Illustrations and Author Comics

Vol 2 still has the illustration pages and end-of-volume author's comic! The exclusive edition also has the fold-out poster of the original cover, of course.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The mistranslated ambush scene was, in fact, Minazuki

So y'all can see for yourself that the text in the Minazuki-Naoto ambush scene clearly uses 俺 and 君 rather than 僕 or テメエ. (Though to be fair, I've actually found an instance where Sho uses 俺 in Vol 2. The line is 「テメエこそ俺にカンショーすんじゃねえ!!」, towards the start of Ch14 when Kagu's mocking his Ikutsuki issues (so Sho's pretty irate). He then returns to using 僕 immediately after; and as there are no visual indications that he switched with Minazuki to say this, I'm pretty confident that this is an exception and not the rule, lol.)

(Said instance of Sho using 俺)

The non-pronoun words should be indicative of whether it's Sho or Minazuki speaking as well, but I'm not fluent enough in Japanese to be able to go into detail on those in this post. ^^;

Overall, I think the translator has been doing pretty good at nailing Sho and Minazuki's respective patterns of speech and employing them in the correct moments – and they go back to getting it correct for when Minazuki reveals himself at the end of Vol 2, too. This one scene just got goofed for some reason I guess. P:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Translation Upsides

Translation Win 1: Ch15's name was translated properly! The Jap name is 「幻月」 (gengetsu), but the fan-Eng translated it as "Minazuki", which would be 「皆月」 if it was in kanji form. Which – I mean, it is the chapter that Minazuki first formally introduces himself as "Minazuki", so it makes sense? But I personally think that "Paraselene", aka the phenomenon called "moon dogs", is a much cooler and more fitting name for how the chapter goes, including Minazuki's reveal. (-v-)

Translation Win 2: At the start of Ch14, Sho says "Tch! Must've fallen asleep. Hate that dream.", which implies that he's had that dream before. I don't know enough Japanese to know if the original line of 「チッ　寝ちまったのか...　嫌な夢だぜ」 also means a recurrence specifically, but it's still interesting fanon-characterization fodder nonetheless.

Puppet-Ikutsuki's following dialog was also a pretty interesting translation, I think. For example: "The smarts to rule the mental battle. The strength to command the physical battle..! You excel in both! In fact, I'd say you're my greatest masterpiece! I'm proud!"

Translation Win 3: In Ch13, Kagutsuchi's first line of reaching out to Sho is translated correctly as "wings of death", versus the "Plume of Dusk" that the fan-Eng transl uses. Conceptually, they're probably the same thing, but literally the word used is 「死の羽根」 (shi no hane), not 「黄昏の羽根」 (tasogare no hane; which is typically "Plume of Dusk" in Japanese). And this isn't a mistake on the part of the Jap writer either, as far as I can tell, as 「黄昏の羽根」 is used in other places, such as when Labrys is explaining what Plumes are to the Investigation Team ([see here]).

Additionally, though the syntax was exceptionally awkward, I thought the essence of Kagu's dialog in this scene was translated pretty well. And honestly, it's fun to headcanon that Kagu could only communicate limited concepts or words before establishing a stronger connection, thus explaining why the syntax is stilted like: "Your suffering will continue. Eternally. End it."

Translation Win 4: It's a small detail, but Ikutsuki specifically saying "If this is all it takes to kill him... Then that's just how weak he was." is heckin' brutal. Switching to past-tense like Sho's already done and over with when he's still alive and listening, oof. (For comparison, the fan-Eng translated it as "If he dies here, it'll just mean he's worthless.")

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Translation Downsides

Typography Loss 1: Kagutsuchi's text still lacks a cool font like the Jap version has, and that reduces the artistic impact a bit, IMO. In the Jap version, it looks a bit like the text was scorched onto the writing surface – which, given Kagu is a kami of fire, is a pretty apt vibe. While in Eng, he's relegated to the font that all the other characters use while speaking. It's probably better like this for readability purposes, but from a stylistic perspective it's a bit sad.

(Also fun fact: In Jap, the Shadow-Kanji and Shadow-Chie puppets briefly use this burnt font in their speech bubbles. It's for about 1-2 bubbles each (S-Kanji calling forth a fighting ring, S-Chie being in disbelief that Naoto had been holding back against her), and the rest of their dialog is in various other fonts. I'm not sure if there are other instances of non-Kagu characters using it beyond that, nor what exactly it's intended to imply through these additional instances, but it's interesting to note.)

(Additionally; examining it more closely, the Japanese typography is really dynamic in general, which is pretty cool. I'm not sure if that dynamicness invalidates any literary significance to Kagu's burnt font though, lol.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Translation Intrigues and Amusements

Typography Intrigue 1: They left the page of fiery "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"s as-is, rather than trying to turn the 「あ」 and 「ア」 into "a/A". Which, while I immensely respect the fan-Eng version for trying to transcribe that artistic text, I think the horrific vibe comes through a bit better with the original text and art preserved. (Maybe in part due to the wave effect on the text having 3 dimensions rather than just 2?)

Translation Intrigue 2: In Ch13, one of the double page spreads is translated as "This world doesn't need anyone. There's no one in this world." Meanwhile, in the fan-Eng version, it's written as "I don't need anyone! I'm fine by myself!"; and the original Jap text is 「この世界には誰もいらない　この世界には誰もいない」 (the same line, just minus the ら).

I personally prefer the fan-Eng's take on it, as the official-Eng's version confused me for several weeks after the fact; but as I don't understand the nuance of the Jap version, I have no clue as to which Eng interpretation is more accurate. >_>;

Translation Amusement 3: Yu apparently has the word "welp" in his lexicon. And on the second page, the way that his dialog is worded makes it sound like he's smitten with Sho, lmao.

Translation Amusement 4: Yu's so used to his friends' antics at this point that he can just tune them out like that, lol. I also just appreciate Chie and Yosuke's dialog here in general.

Translation Intrigue 5: Ch13's title is translated as "Crimson Memories" in the official-Eng transl, versus fan-Eng's "Scarlet Memories". The original Japanese words are 「緋色の記憶」.

Translation Intrigue 6: What's typically translated as "the rules of this world" (regarding Adachi) is translated here as "reality's rules". The original Jap text (in this manga at least) is 「現実のルール」, not 「世界のルール」; so literally "reality", like "reality of the situation", and not 'reality' like "world/society".

Translation Intrigue 7: Ikutsuki's iconic "the death of everything... but also the beginning" speech is translated a bit differently compared to the fan-Eng, and drastically different compared to Ultimax's EpP3 Ch1. It keeps the same general concepts, but the cadence, word choices, and syntax are executed differently.

Translation Intrigue 8: Side-by-sides of the kendo/fencing pun because I think the differing translation choices, as well as the original context of the pun, are interesting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(If you wanna see the fan-Eng in higher quality than the screengrabs I used, you can find it on Mangadex [here].)

[annymation]

The question may sound a bit repetitive, but what would an interaction between Canon!Asha and Aster be like? Kow!Asha has very different motivations and personalities from the Disney movie, so I would find it interesting to see how Aster reacts to everything that happened in the canonical movie.

We may criticize Canon!Asha a lot, but I believe Aster would love her in every universe. And Canon!Asha and Aster actually do have a lot in common, both being very optimistic and... "Caring too much" I guess, that's her personality in the movie- I need to focus, I keep just being salty with Wish- Anyway, here's some scenes with them.

So remember how in my rewrite Aster's initial plan was to just get in the castle and return the wishes, thinking people would automatically want to grant them themselves? Well KOW!Asha being a realist knew that wouldn't be a good idea for several reasons, both because they could get caught and also the people wouldn't want their wishes back.

But Canon!Asha on the other hand... Well that plan was exactly what she herself went with in the movie right? So here's them coming up with the plan and executing it:

"YEAH! We can get my Saba's and my mother's wishes back, now that I have your help!" Asha says with enthusiasm, she feels ready to take on anything the world throws at them "How can we start?"

Aster flies off the ground, looking just as excited as her "I'm glad you asked! Here's my plan"

Aster uses his star dust to illustrate his plan:

"First! We get in the castle. Then we free all the wishes. Everyone gets their wishes back. They all learn that they should make their wishes come true through their own efforts. BOOM. They get "Something more for them than thisss"!" he sing songs the last phrase at the rhythm of "This Wish"

"You mean get ALL the wishes of Rosas? Wait- but isn't that stealing?" She questions awkwardly

"It would be, if they belonged in there, which they don't" Aster explains with a cheeky smile

"You're right" Asha had a bright smile and a gleam of hope in her eyes "I think we can settle with just my families wishes though" she adds with a shrug

Aster's smile falters for a second in surprise "... Heh hehe uh what?" The star asks hoping he misunderstood "Just THEIR wishes?... What about everyone elses?"

"Oh yeah yeah sure but... Ya know, priorities first heheh." She says with a quirky giggle "And later we can ask my friends to help us free the other ones, I'm sure they'll accept helping me betray the king, they're the best"

"... Okaaaay then! Guess we got a plan!" Aster exclaims with his usual enthusiasm.

Aster would prefer that they freed all the wishes all together... But she's the wish maker, so whatever she says goes, besides, what's the worse that could happen-

The next day they watch as Canon!Magnifico get's possessed by the evil book, while the sneak out with the two wishes

"Oh my galaxy! Did you see that???" Aster and Asha are running away from the castle, back to her house

"Yeah! I can't believe Magnifico would stoop to forbidden magic" Asha says with a angry look on her face.

(I learned the word "Stoop" today by the way, love learning new words as a non-english speaker)

"He's dangerous now! We gotta tell somebody! The queen maybe, or-"

"Let's go to my house!" Asha says dragging the star boy by the hand

".......... Really?" Aster asks, more so in disbelief and concern.

You know you've lost it when Aster is the voice of reason.

Anyway we cut to the scene when Sabino get's his wish back, and ya know what? That deleted scene of Sabino playing the lute (That I called a mandolin my whole rewrite by mistake but we'll stick with that) happens, because I really like the idea of Sabino calling Aster "my sweet star" it's so wholesome.

And as Sabino sings, Aster extends his hand inviting Asha for a slow dance, and as they dance they get lost in eachothers eyes. This scene being like a replacement for "At All Cost" in this quick rewrite we're doing here.

(I know you asked for just one interaction Aled but dang you caught me in a creative mood, now I'm remaking the whole Wish movie but replacing the wishing star with Aster, and finding out he ACTUALLY makes the scenes better)

Anyway the door of the house suddenly opens and the cold wind from outside blow out the candles.

"Aww how sweet~" The now corrupted king says sarcastically from the door with a cruel smile. All four of them inside the house are mortified in fear as he approaches "Getting quite acquainted with your little partner in crime, huh Asha?"

"They've committed no crimes!" Sabino steps up to defend the two

Aster and Asha are holding hands ready to protect one another at all cost.

Magnifico ignore's the elderly man's comment "I don't know HOW or WHY this star chose to answer to your calling. But it's coming with ME now." He says grabbing Aster's wrist angrily

"Wha- A star?? Hahah what makes you think I'm a star?" Aster tries to lie, even though he's very bad at it

The king smirks "Let's just say a little birdie told me about you... Also your hair is glowing" The king points out matter of factly

"Touché" Aster says looking up at his own glowing hair

Asha proceeds to drop a whole dishes closet on the king, as she did in the movie, and they make a run for it.

They escape in a boat and Aster uses his magic to make the boat's oars row by themselves.

"I didn't mean for this to happen..." Asha says, feeling hopeless now that the king is after them

"I know baby" Sakina says caressing her daughter's face.

Aster is looking as Asha with a sorrowful frown.

"I was foolish to think I could change anything... I shouldn't have ever wished" She says disheartened, her eyes are downcast

(I am taking this dialogue straight from the movie btw)

Aster feels his light flickering weaker as her hopes diminish, and he tries offering some words of advice

"If anyone can change this it's YOU, and I'll be here right by your side all the way... We just gotta keep trying, together"

"But how? I've ruined everything for my family, and now everyone in Rosas is at risk, because of me" Tears threaten to fall from her eyes.

"Oh Asha no... Everyone is at risk... Because of Magnifico" Asha's mom reassures her

"Our dear Rosas... Your father's heart would break for what we now know" Sabino said with pain in his voice

Asha looks at Rosas in the distance with a thoughtful gaze, then she turns to Aster, they're staring at her waiting for what path she'll choose

"I know what you're thinking... Cause' I'm thinking it too" Asha tells him

Aster smiles, trusting that they're in sync with each other "Yeah, we'll go back, and free the king from his cur-"

"We'll go back to tell my friends how the king is a horrible mad man that must be stopped." Asha says confidently

"Why are you like this?" Aster eyebrows are furrowed together as he looks at her frustrated and absolutely DONE with this, and also rethinking his crush on her.

Aaaaaand that's all I got!

[stormoflina]

i like dom, he is a sweetheart, but its true he didnt deliever what he was signed for. after hendo we wanted a midfielder who can score goals, who will have g/a. sadly, dom is not that guy. im not blaming him, neither is ale, although he is being played out of position

----------------------------------------

this type of comments give me the ick so bad hahaha when it refers to players that are new to a league like Domi. he is new to a completely different league with a team that has certain plans and strategies that he needs to adapt to, just like every other player lmao.

yeah, some players adapt faster than others, but i think that's what happens literally everywhere: some adapt faster to new environments than others lolol.

Mac Allister had been playing in the premier prior to getting to Liverpool yeah, but it's still a new team with new everything lol. he is slowly finding himself within the team's system and we can see that.

i think we cannot speak so surely about a player's performance so early on unless they have been complete and utter shit and have not delivered anything at all, those types of "failed" signings are very easy to spot early on. but yeah, at least give them a year and, in Domi's case, wait for him to come back from his injury too omg. i think even Mo has talked about how Domi is new to all of this and that he is still young so he has a lot to learn still and ppl should not put so much pressure on him.

yeah, ppl hyped him up a lot (even the media, because... its the media) and he might have leaned into that hype if that makes sense, but wouldn't you do it too? i would also feel like im on top of the world and use this hype to get more confident. but the pressure is bound to get too much esp. with someone new to the league.

so sorry for the long rant omg, ive been thinking about this for a while. i hope it all makes sense, im not a native english speaker.

i just want to finish off by saying: give him (them) time and let's give constructive criticism i beg (this is not for anon omg this is in general cause a lot of people love to talk shit instead of trying to help lmao)

Hi anon!

Don't you apologize for the rant, I really enjoyed reading it, especially because I wholeheartedly agree and couldn't have said it better myself! And as a non-native speaker I wouldn't have guessed that English isn't your first language if you don't mention it!

Essentially, I think Domi is a victim of his own early success. He literally hit the ground running and even that doesn't express fully how quickly he got so popular. It feels like a lifetime ago, but I remember how he got POTM for August, or his jersey sold the most at the start of the season. I even remember that like two months into the season there was some stupid 'who's your favourite lfc player' poll on twt and he got first place (??) and there was a complete meltdown over that lool.

So, for the first few months, he was everywhere, in the media, on social media, constantly praised, edited next to Stevie G, it was a LOT. Everyone was definitely doing too much, so when the inevitable happened and realism kicked in, some were quick to be loud with their criticism. Just like they say, the higher you get, the worse the fall will be. In my opinion, that's what happened.

I also feel like that because of his great start, people just completely forgot his original situation - that he's young, from a slower, less physically demanding league, with winter breaks, less game time, playing a completely new role, moving to a whole other country alone, knowing absolutely nobody etc, etc. Sure, everyone of our new signings got their fair share of criticism, but I do feel like there was also a level of patience with them, something that was/is a bit of lacking with Dominik. Endo and Grav were able to get slowly used to the Prem, getting their minutes managed, Dominik didn't. He was playing essentially the role of two players multiple times with all the red cards flying around in the first months and I say this comfortably, that many games were won thanks to his efforts.

This is how a team works, where players are fighting for each other and not just their own egos. He stepped up when Endo and Grav couldn't because of their fitness and when CuJo and Macca were sent off (..) or injured. And now, the others are doing the same thing. It's just recency bias that has people forming sometimes rather harsh opinions, I think.

GOSH, I do suffer from a very serious yapping disease. I could write literal essays on topics like this lol.

[sasaranurude]

Linguistically I just think the way English-speaking fandoms of Japanese series (in which the media concerned has no major official translation+the fandom is small in eng spaces and so has to be more tightly knit with the jpn fandom out of necessity; not, like, BNHA or whatever where you can feasibly have your whole fandom experience in an eng bubble) will take Japanese slang or abbreviations based on English words, and then anglify those, instead of coming up with original English abbreviations, is really really interesting. It's definitely a case where using the jargon to signify your ingroup status is a part of it but I don't think you can explain the whole phenomenon with that? I don't actually know enough about linguistics to make any conclusions fghfhgh, I just know I keep seeing examples of it and it's cool to me!!!!!!!

One of the premier examples of this for me is hypmic. Because "hypmic" is not at all a normal abbreviation of Hypnosis Mic for English. Anytime an english-speaker who's not embedded in the fandom tries to abbreviate it, they almost always land on "hypnomic." (HM would be another natural one, but I think everyone realizes that that's too vague to work.) There's an aspect of that ingroup jargon to it: embedded fans just don't say hypnomic, and it marks users of that abbreviation as outsiders to the fandom. Because "hypmic" is descended from the jpn abberivation ヒプマイ hipumai. The "no" part of hypnosis isn't in the Japanese abbreviation, so it doesn't get transferred to English. Only the syllables already represented in the jpn do. Hence hypmic. The English does add a sound not present in the jpn (the c), but since it's part of the same syllable as the mai (mi), it's a more natural addition based on the jpn. (You do also see "hpmi" used in eng spaces sometimes, more straightforwardly converting each kana to one letter.)

That retaining a final consonant sound isn't necessarily consistent across different examples of this phenomenon, though! It seems it's most likely to be at the end of a word. Just to use another example: ship smushnames where the characters have non-Japanese names. Sticking with hypmic for the sake of it, you see this with Gentaro/Dice. In jpn it's だいげん daigen or げんだい gendai. In eng spaces the latter is almost always spelled "gendice", but the former doesn't really have a standardized version, and you do see both dicegen and daigen used, with maybe daigen being a little more frequent. Hilariously I think that this inconsistency has almost singlehandedly led to "gendice" being used as the "default" version of the ship name in eng spaces, as opposed to jpn spaces where "daigen" is used more frequently. (I mean I guess you could also assume that eng spaces prefer top!gentaro but I usually see people use it in a position-agnostic way, as opposed to jpn fandom where positions are srs bzns and daigen really is more popular than gendai)

AND I COULD LIST MORE EXAMPLES AND THEIR QUIRKS AND MAYBE I WILL LATER BUT I ALSO DON'T HAVE A CONCLUSION. I Just Think It's Neat. someone should do a linguistics degree master's thesis on this

[datasoong47]

English pronouns have had some interesting developments over the past few centuries

In the second person, the old singular thou has been lost almost entirely (there's apparently still a few dialects that preserve it, and of course it retains some religious use), and the old plural you is developing a specifically singular meaning in many dialects, while in others it remains non-number-specific. But even in many dialects where you can be used regardless of numbers, a specifically plural form has arisen, with different dialects coming up with different terms, such as y'all, youse, yinz, you guys, you folks, etc. It seems quite likely that this development will continue and a future stage of English will be left with you being specifically singular and some other form as a plural. The only real question is whether one of the competing dialectal forms will win out in all dialects, or whether there'll remain dialectal variation in the 2nd person plural (both are plausible scenarios I think)

In the third person, they has recently acquired a use as a singular specific pronoun. It has long had a singular indefinite usage going all the way back to Middle English - that is, being used to refer to an unknown or unspecified individual (e.g., "someone left their umbrella behind"), but it's recently come to be used to refer to a specific known individual. I've even heard some people using they as a general-use pronoun, including for cis people and animals. It's conceivable - though by no means certain! - that it will eventually replace he and she, and future English will have two 3rd person singular pronouns - an animate pronoun they and an inanimate pronoun it. This leaves the 3rd person plural without a dedicated pronoun, so I suspect that, similar to the 2nd person plural, some form of new plural will develop. My guess as to what would be the most likely development is those ones (possibly shortened to just those or some other contraction like "those-uns" or "tho'nes" or something) being extended to personal use, but other possibilities exist (conceivably even something like they-all → th'all by analogy with y'all)

I also wonder if agreement might change in the future with singular they. At present singular they still takes plural verb agreement - they are not they is, despite singular nouns and other third-person singular pronouns (including neopronouns like xe!) take the singular. It seems probable to me that singular agreement might, at some point, come to be used with singular they, so that future generations might happily say "they is" for singular they, just as "themself" has come to be accepted for many speakers

(Side note: I would love to read a study of child language acquisition focusing on singular they and verbal agreement - there are plenty of families today where children are growing up with a parent or other relative or close family friend who uses singular they, I would be fascinated to see if children in such contexts have difficulty using plural agreement with singular they)

The 1st person, meanwhile, has been pretty stable in most dialects since the Old English period, with only changes in pronunciation and the loss of the OE dual, and there's no reason to suspect that that will change anytime soon (especially outside of any broader changes like loss of case distinctions in pronouns in general - which has happened in some dialects already!) (there are some specific contexts where "we" is used in place of "I" or "you", but I don't see that being likely to spread outside of those contexts)

I suspect that future linguists will describe these changes in the pronoun system as a characteristic of what we now call Modern English (which they'll presumably give some other label to), perhaps even using the conclusion of that process to define the cutoff between our stage of English and the next stage. Middle English saw the loss of grammatical gender, adjective agreement, and the near-complete loss of the case system outside of pronouns, while Modern English saw the loss of the old 2nd and 3rd person (animate) singular pronouns and the replacement of the old male-female-inanimate distinction with a new animate-inanimate distinction, along with the development of new 2nd and 3rd person plural pronouns